Ramsey had thought, a time or two, that Bill might have been willing to help him a bit with the cold cases, on his own time, too. He might have asked, if he hadn’t met Lucy.
“I know him,” Ramsey said, putting the pages in front of him back in their folder, and locking the information in the top drawer of his desk. He grabbed his navy suit coat—the only suit he hadn’t dropped at the cleaners that morning—off the back of his chair, tightened the tie he’d loosened, tapped on Bill’s desk as he passed by and went out to greet the son of one of his prime suspects.
“Lucy, you’re sure you’re okay?” Amber stoo
d beside Lucy’s desk, her eyes filled with more compassion than Lucy had ever seen.
“I’m fine.” She was writing up a report on the dig from the other night. The discovery of the bone.
She’d tried to call Ramsey, but he hadn’t picked up. And that was just as well.
Todd had gone home and Lionel was in his office with the door closed, which left the two women alone.
Pulling her chair over, Amber sat down at the side of Lucy’s desk.
“Listen, there’s a fine line between having what it takes to do the job, and going nuts to do the job.”
Lucy didn’t want to hear it. She was not going nuts. And if Amber thought she was going to convince her she had a screw loose, then she could save her breath.
“You’re a woman, Luce. You deal with things differently than a man would. That’s okay. It doesn’t make you any less capable as a cop.”
Where, a second ago, Lucy had been ready and able to speak her mind loud and clear, she suddenly couldn’t speak. She looked at Amber and prayed that she wasn’t going to cry.
Amber’s hand covered hers. “We’ve got a tough gig here, holding our own with the men whose ability to do the job isn’t questioned beyond physicals and test scores. If we show emotion, we’re weak.”
If Lucy showed emotion it scared Sandy to death. Unless it was hurt feelings from liking a guy who didn’t like her back. Or fear of the first day of school.
“But the truth is, Lucy, what makes us a valuable asset to the team is the differences we bring to the investigations. You, in particular, your ability to understand people, to get inside and know what makes them tick, that’s a real talent, Lucy. Most of us just guess based on personality profiles and experience, which is all good, but you…you’ve got an edge on us that makes any team you’re on lucky to have you.”
She listened. And she believed. She just wasn’t sure how much she cared at the moment.
“But if you lose your ability to feel, your femininity, the nurturing that comes so naturally to you, you’re going to lose that edge.”
Maybe. And maybe that was as it should be. Maybe she wouldn’t always be a cop. Maybe she just didn’t know who she was at the moment.
She’d let her mother down. And she’d let herself down. She wasn’t going to bring Allie back. She wasn’t going to be able to save Sandy, as she’d always told herself she would do. She couldn’t give her mother a happy ending. She wasn’t ever going to know who Sandy had been before the rape. Before she’d lost Allie.
“You’re at a crossroads, Lucy. One that most female cops come to at some point or other. You either shut down and eventually lose what made you a good cop to begin with, or you learn how to be a cop and a woman at the same time.”
It wasn’t Amber’s words so much as the honest and warm look in the woman’s eyes that reached Lucy.
“What was your crossroads?” she asked.
“I answered a call for a baby who wasn’t breathing. The mom called it in. I listened to the 9-1-1 recording—she was frantic. I got there. The baby was blue, but worse, she had these marks around her neck. I was sick to my stomach and needed to console the mother, and then I realized she didn’t even see that her baby had been hurt. It didn’t take an hour to build the case. The mother, probably in a postpartum depression, tried to quiet her own newborn daughter by grabbing her around the throat. She held the baby, rocking her, crying, begging her to be okay, and I had to collar her.”
“Did the baby live?”
“Yeah. And miraculously without brain damage. She’s in second grade now and excelling in every way.”
Another happy ending. “That’s great!” Lucy said, truly happy for the little girl, and for the mother, who’d acted out of illness but whose daughter meant everything to her in the world.
“Yeah. She’s living with her aunt and uncle. They’re her legal guardians since her mother’s in prison for assault and battery on a minor.”
“But you said she was suffering from postpartum depression…?.”
“The jury returned a guilty verdict and the judge gave her fifteen to life. And the night after sentencing, when I left the courtroom, was my crossroads. I am a woman. I don’t have children of my own, but I hope to someday. As that poor mother was taken from the courtroom, sobbing for her baby, I wanted to die knowing that it was partially because of my testimony that she was going away. I’d done my job well enough to get a conviction.”
“What did you do then?” Lucy asked.